Nov 10, 2015

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Prevent Your Family Getting Intestinal Worms for Christmas!

Pets catch intestinal worms by coming into contact with the eggs. The eggs can be found on the ground, in the grass, or on the fur of other pets. The eggs are often sticky, and so can attach to your pets fur. If your pet then goes to lick or chew at their fur, they then swallow the eggs, where they hatch and take up residence in your dog or cat’s bowels. Once they grow up, the worms produce more eggs, which then leave your pet’s body via their poo, some of them getting stuck to your pets bottom as they do. These new eggs can be picked up by other pets and humans who come into contact with the area the poo has touched, or anyone who comes into contact with the infected pet.

If left untreated intestinal worms can be fatal to our pets and some worms can even be a health risk to us humans. It is very difficult to detect if your pet may have worms until they are very sick, as some worm infestations can show few or no symptoms at all. When they do show symptoms, you may notice vomiting, diarrhoea, weakness, weight loss regardless of a good appetite, dull coat, breathing difficulties or even an abnormally swollen belly particularly in our younger pets. One of the most commonly seen signs of an intestinal worm infection is the good old disco trick of scooting around on their bottom! This indicates the worms are causing an irritation around the rump area.

As already mentioned these intestinal worms can also infect humans. Humans, similar to our pets, may show no signs of infection early on, and may progress to having vomiting, diarrhoea, weakness, weight loss, and a swollen belly. Worse still, the worms ca travel in weird places in people like under the skin or even behind the backs of the eyes causing blindness. Who is most at risk ? Our children and even up until your early 20's.

If there is ever a good reason to worm your pet it has to be .... to protect yourself.

This makes it even more important to protect our pets against intestinal worms. The main types of intestinal worms are tapeworms, roundworms and hookworms. By worming your adult pet using a wormer tablet that targets all three of these types of worms this month, you can be confident that your pet and your family are protect against them when things get busy over the Christmas season.

Here at Hampton Park Veterinary Hospital we offer a tablet or chewable tablet that is given every 3 months. If your pet is impossible to give tablets to, we’re happy to help you with this when you pick up your worming medication from us.

Tablet I hear you say ! There's ways around this . We can help you selecting a spot on application that goes on the skin for both cats and dogs .